The International Olympic Committee’s executive board is preparing for a crucial conference call on Sunday to decide whether to exclude all Russian athletes from the Rio de Janeiro Games.
Advertisement
A decision is expected to be reached on whether the Russian NPC will be suspended on August 1.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier this week upheld the decision of athletics’ world governing body the IAAF to ban Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics due to widespread doping violations.
The report claimed that the commission found evidence that Russia’s Sports Ministry and the Center for the Training of Russian National Teams and the Federal Security Service had covered up the doping program in Russian sports.
Putin’s intervention came as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote to International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach to oppose a blanket ban on the Russian team, saying that a collective sanction was “unacceptable”.
“I regard the principle of collective punishment as unacceptable”, the 85-year-old wrote in the letter, posted on the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation website. “I’m convinced that it contradicts the very culture of the Olympic movement based on general human values, humanism and the principles of law”, Gorbachev said.
The IPC said Russia’s National Paralympic Committee (NPC Russia) would have an opportunity to make its case prior to the decision.
Moscow officials have slammed the CAS decision to reject its appeal against a ban from the world athletics body IAAF, blaming a broader political campaign by the West against Russian Federation.
“I support the fight against banned substances in sports”.
“The IPC considers this vital to ensuring athletes are able to compete on a level playing field”.
McLaren’s report into alleged state-sponsored doping during Sochi 2014, as well as in competitions in summer sports, claimed that 35 disappearing positive samples from the Moscow Laboratory had involved athletes at the Paralympic Games.
They are also sending 19 samples from the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games held in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi for immediate further analysis, after they were identified as having been potentially doctored as part of a sample-swapping regime.
The new cases bring to 98 the total number of athletes who have failed tests so far in the reanalysis of their stored samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Games.
Advertisement
Against the backdrop of the current doping scandal engulfing Russian Federation the International Olympic Committee reported separately on Friday 45 new doping failures from the last two Games, bringing the total number of positive drug tests to 98 since a retesting programme was launched.
